At the end of last summer, Josh surprised me with a birthday visit to Winter Park, having discovered that it was the home to a well-known vegan restaurant and some nice botanical gardens. As we got ready to leave early that morning, his only clue was that I needed to wear some sneakers and bring my camera.

Once we arrived at the gardens, I was excited to work on my outdoor photography skills, my DSLR still being relatively new to me at the time.

Without being too concerned about directions, we just followed whatever paths looked most interesting, and we marveled at the views along the way.

Eventually, we stumbled upon a corner of the park with a huge patch of flowers, and we spent ages watching the bees and butterflies flit about, joined by a few other creatures.

Once we were satisfied with our insect photos, we pushed on into other parts of the park.

And finally, we started working our way back toward the parking lot, but not before getting a few more shots of some nice flowers we found.

I absolutely loved our walk through Mead Botanical Gardens. If you are in the Orlando area and looking for a nice place to walk through nature, this is a wonderful place. Admission is free, and I would recommend allowing yourself about an hour to walk through the different areas of the gardens. Winter Park also has many other things to do and see, and the gardens were just my first introduction to the city’s charms.